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Thursday, June 29, 2017

Crayon Quilt Finished!

I was hoping to finish this quilt before month-end, and I did. The pattern is Color Me by Emily Herrick, but I added an additional crayon (aqua/teal) to make it bigger and fit in better with my monthly Rainbow Scrap Challenge colors. This was so easy and so much fun - and a great way to use up scraps. I started it last summer and wanted to finish it this summer so that all my rainbow scrap quilts wouldn’t finish up at the same time. That happened to me last year and it took me months to get them all done (in addition to Christmas quilts).

So Color Me finished at 51x68”. The batting is my usual Warm & Plush. The background is a white on white print I had just enough of, the backing and binding are this crayon print that I picked up on the local shop hop earlier this month.

The backing is pretty basic and not too exciting. I would have loved it if the print had contained some greens and pinks, but that’s just me. Below is a picture I snapped on the floor of the living room. Not a great showcase for the quilt exactly, but it does show all the textural goodness after it was washed.

I spent several days quilting this, trying new-to-me things. First, I did the white sashing between the crayons. I was inspired by Lori Kennedy of The Inbox Jaunt. Between her blog, Instagram and Pinterest (I have all my favorites pinned) and her new book Free Motion Quilting 1-2-3) which I bought a couple months ago, the only problem was narrowing down the ideas. Some I tried and just couldn’t “grock”, even after practice (case in point; the motif between the aqua and green, below). It’s no secret to me that my brain works differently, LOL. But other patterns I tried I really loved.

The crayons were all quilted with what I call a sine wave. Easy, zen, not necessarily even from patch to patch but I don’t really care about that.

My favorite motif was the little curvy line with bubbles (mine have 3 instead of 5) between the yellow and orange crayons and in another spot, too.

All the crayons had swirls in the tip and dense quilting (either small stippling or pebbling) around the tip to make them stand out.

I also quilted waves, zig-zags, leaves and more with varying amounts of success. The border ended up being a wavy line with hearts, with the exception of the first 3 motifs, which started as leaves before morphing into hearts. Like I said, my brain is different - it had already carved a mental heart path and didn’t want to do leaves.

So, Color Me is my 7th quilt finish this quarter (I am not counting those 4 whole-cloth flannel baby quilts that I showed in the last post). This one was #2 on my Quarter 2 Finish Along Goals. But, there I ran into a problem. It seems that when I posted my list back in April, I didn’t link up properly to the Finish Along link party, and my post never appeared to them. So, have I been toiling in vain? No! Although I am not eligible for the quarter-end linky party and prizes, the main motivation for me is to make goals and stick to them. Out of the 7 quilts I had listed as goals, I finished five of them. Not bad, especially considering that I also finished six baby quilts and countless kennel quilts that were not on the list.

**pats self on back**

I may be an airhead, but I can be a productive one!

By the way, just a reminder that you can check out my Quilt Gallery page any time. The link is right under the blog header. I’ll be back on Saturday with a yellow scrap recap and the start of a new color for July!

That turned out really cute. Congrats on the finish. And kudoos to you for trying some new quilting ideas. And thanks for letting me know Lori has a book. I visit her site for quilting ideas quite often.

Cathy, that quilt is wonderful! I may have to make one of those, and will definitely put it on my list. I'm so impressed that you tried all the different quilting designs. That is something I want to try, but fear of messing up a quilt is holding me back. Beautiful and fun finish!

Fabulous finish! So smart to stagger the quilts so that you don't have to. Complete the e tire stack at one time. Such a fun pattern, and your quilting turned out great. What a fun chance to try out lots of new motifs.